It has to be a source of concern to the Wiltshire Music Centre that an artist of the national calibre of pianist Leon McCawley can barely half fill the place.

Tickets were priced at £18; £36 for a couple; a glass of wine each at £4 would mean a fiver change out of £50.

Under 18s, of which there were but five or six in the audience, could get in for £9. I wonder what the problem is. 

However, to the concert: McCawley, undemonstrative, seemingly dour, has a driving, almost relentless style.

It drove Beethoven’s Sonata in C Minor a little briskly for my liking – but, then, pace is almost a mission these days.

The second movement, adagio molto, was emotionally fluffy, flowery: just the ticket for letting the mind wander and wallow in its soulful, evocative beauty.

And the tellingly long silence twixt that and the finale spoke a thousand words.

Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words heralded an interval in which it was so refreshingly non-U to see McCawley floating about signing CDs.

Then came the Thirteen Preludes of Rachmaninov: Monumental, almost fearsome; quite an epic of supreme concentration and sustained brilliance.